Course Summary :

This course provides a full guide on creating animated 2D characters in Unity.

There are 2 main techniques of animating 2D characters: frame-based and bone-based. We will create a fully functional 2D character with each of these methods. You will learn how to bring your 2d characters to life by making them move and jump around in the scene.

The material in this course is divided into 4 Sections. Section 1 features a short introduction to the course.

In Section 2 we will focus on frame-based technique. You will learn a lot about spritesheets. We will go through all the stages of working with spritesheets from their creation to slicing and creating animations for our characters in Unity from sliced images. We will create a simple script that will let us control our character in the scene. Frame-based workflow is mostly used with pixel art characters and in all the other cases when you have the art for your character's animations arranged in separate frame images.

In Section 3 we will switch to a more advanced bone-based approach. You will learn how to manage animated characters that are assembled from separate body parts. Using bone-based approach will let us customize our characters by adding facial features and clothing items to them. It also offers a lot of flexibility because you can come up with new animations for your character in the middle of your game's development. In this Section we will create a fully animated bone-based character that we can dress up in the next Section of this course.

In Section 4 we will cover character customization. I have prepared 2 clothing kits and we will try them on our bone-based character model from the previous Section. You will learn how to change movement velocity and animation speed of any given Animator state of your character. Several lectures will be dedicated to making our bone-based character jump. We will use an interesting technique of creating multiple jump animations and showing them through a Blend Tree in Unity. You will learn an easy way to create one way platforms in Unity.

I have tried to save the project that I was working in as often as I can so that you can easily pick up the material from any point in this course.

All these projects and the assets used to create characters are available for download with this course.

What are the requirements?

You can be an absolute beginner with Unity to take this course. This course is very beginner-friendly and I try to explain everything that I am doing as much as I can. We spend most of the time working in Unity Editor. This course is also very light in terms of coding; it features just one script that is created in C# and everything that is happening in this script is explained line-by-line.

You should install Unity3d to develop the application that we are making in this course. I am using Unity 5.3 to develop the game project in this course.

What am I going to get from this course?

Add animated 2d characters to your game.

Along with this course you will get access to a huge archive of 2D game assets from the game that is called Glitch converted from flash into a PNG format and ready for use in any of your Unity game projects.

Create both frame-based and bone-based character animations in Unity without using any external tools.

Create an â€œidle fillerâ€ animation. If your character is idle for too long, transition to another animation to amuse and surprise your players.

You will learn how to manage Animator state machines in Unity to transition between different animations that your character can perform.

You will learn how to set up one way platforms, which is a must have feature for any platformer game.

You will learn a lot about spritesheets. We will go through all the stages of working with spritesheets: from creating a spritesheet and slicing it into separate sprites in Unity all the way to turning all these sprites into animations on your character.

You will get a fully functional Unity project of the application created in this tutorial.

What is the target audience?

This course is for people who are interested in making platformer-style games or any other character-based 2D games. You will learn how to create animated 2D characters and make them move and jump around in your game.

Also, if you enjoy the aesthetic of the art assets that are used in this course, it is definitely for you. To create characters, I use assets from the game that is called Glitch. You will also get access to a huge archive of art asset files from Glitch along with this course. We have done some work to convert all these amazing assets into high resolution PNG images so that you can use them in any of your game projects.

Pre-Requisites :

Game developers can learn how to create Fully-Animated Characters in Unity, ready for use in your 2D Platformer Game

Target Audience :

designers, game developers, game designers

Curriculum :

Section 1 - Introduction

1 :
Introduction to the Course

2 :
About the Author

Section 2 - Frame-based Animation

3 :
Comparison of Frame-based and Bone-based Animation Types

4 :
Creating Spritesheets

5 :
Slicing Sprites and Creating Frame-based Animations in Unity

6 :
Adding New Animations to an Existing 2D Character in Unity

7 :
Simple Character Controller

8 :
Controlling Transitions Between Animations in the Animator Component

Section 3 - Bone-based Animation

9 :
Creating a Sprite Atlas in Unity

10 :
Setting Up Pivot Points for Moving Body Parts

11 :
Assembling the Bone-Based Character in Unity

12 :
Sorting Order of All the Body Parts

13 :
Creating Bone-Based Animations

14 :
Perfecting Walk Animation

15 :
Creating Idle and Scratch Animations

16 :
Configuring the Animator and Testing

Section 4 - Character Customization

17 :
Overview of Character Art Assets from Glitch

18 :
The Girl Character

19 :
The Armored Knight Character

20 :
Jump Animations

21 :
Jump State Blend Tree and Animator Transitions

22 :
Changes to Controller Script

23 :
One Way Platforms and Conclusions

Reviews

Instructor :

Shaun Spalding

Biography

Shaun is an intellectual property attorney who represents Youtubers, game developers, and digital media companies. His clients include some of the top 40 most-viewed and most-subscribed Youtube channels in the world.
He has spoken at conferences like SXSW Interactive, SXSW Music, Vidcon, and New Media Expo on legal and business topics.
Outside of law, he is a published writer, transmedia producer, and former filmmaker and graphic designer. He has over 30,000+ followers on Twitter, over 140k followers on Vine, and 6000+ followers on Tumblr.